Giuliani associate Igor Fruman pleads guilty to federal campaign finance charges

[zuul]

Zoe Tillman @ZoeTillman:

Former Rudy Giuliani associate Igor Fruman is pleading guilty in the federal case that accuses him of being part of a scheme to evade campaign finance laws that prohibit contributions from foreign nationals.

Link to tweet

Reminder of who Igor Fruman is (from October 2019):

Two Men Who Worked With Rudy Giuliani To Dig Up Dirt On Biden Have Been Arrested (Oct 2019)

Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two key figures in House Democrats' impeachment inquiry who worked with Rudy Giuliani in an effort to gather damaging information about Joe Biden, were arrested as they were about to board a plane at Dulles airport near Washington, DC, a spokesperson for the US attorney's office in Manhattan confirmed Thursday morning.

The two men were charged with conspiring to skirt federal laws that prohibit foreign nationals from contributing to US campaigns, according to the indictment, which was first published by the New York Times. They're accused of entering into "secret agreements" to hide the scheme from candidates and federal regulators, laundering foreign money into the campaigns through various corporate identities, and using "straw donors" to make the contributions.

The indictment does not name Giuliani or President Donald Trump, and doesn't directly refer to efforts by Parnas and Fruman to convince Ukrainian prosecutors to probe unsubstantiated claims that Biden improperly used his position as vice president to oust a Ukrainian prosecutor who had investigated a company where Biden's son Hunter Biden was a board member. The charging papers did say that at one point they had lobbied a member of Congress at the request of "one or more Ukrainian officials."

Parnas and Fruman had one-way tickets to fly out of the US, and were arrested at Dulles airport at around 6 p.m. on Wednesday night, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman told reporters Thursday afternoon. The Wall Street Journal reported that they had planned to fly to Vienna, Austria.

[gratuitous]

1. Darned paperwork, Igor

Finally figured out the former guy was no longer in a position to write you your very own Get Out Of Jail Free card? Too bad, so sad.

[Botany]

2. Every picture tells a story

Trump and Russia it was all a big hoax & fake news.

[Budi]

3. Yo, Rudy!

Link to tweet

[PSPS]

4. I wonder what his laughably-light sentence will be.

[zuul]

5. The experts think the big takeaway is that he seems to be cooperating.

Initially he pleaded innocent on these charges.

[Pinback]

6. Yes - interesting development.

Thanks for posting.

[sarcasmo]

7. Trump should have gave Rudy the cash he requested.